I have a personal story to tell that could be of benefit to those trying to get the gum off their shoes and leave the collective hive of AA. I made a decision to turn my will and my life over to a reliable, trustworthy power that actually looks after my best interests - Me. It was my best thinking that got me out of there. Honestly. What a concept, eh? Rarely have I seen a person fail that has thoroughly found their path.

I was raised in a religious home but had a predisposition toward skepticism. One of the reasons I originally chose to drink was a feeling that I was being lied to about it. When I drank at the tender age of 11, I was sure I had been lied to. Around the age of 13 I ran into a guy who was doing martial arts and since I was growing up in LA, learning self defense seemed like a pretty rational thing to do. As it turned out, way back then in the 1960's, I was to be introduced to a way of life that honored vigorous individual effort, respect for the well being of oneself and others and above all personal responsibility for one's actions. I was and still am enamored with such beliefs. No thanks to AA in any way. Through that experience I gained a confidence in my own integrity that I sensed lacking in many of the adults around me. One of my early dreams was to be a world traveler. I used to sit on the beach in Southern California and look out across the ocean and tell myself that traveling was what I wanted to do. I'll fast forward here to stick with the object of my little story. I managed to navigate to over 18 countries by the time I was 25.

As I stated earlier, the behavior of ingesting intoxicating substances was a part of my lifestyle. It wasn't however the biggest, most important part of my life. In other words I had a life and I liked it a lot. Then some catastrophic tragedies occurred without any invitation. In rapid succession life fired away at me with the realities of death, divorce and loss of fortune.

It started when I was living overseas and I got a telex (no faxes in those days) that my father had cancer. I spent a small fortune traveling back and forth to watch him slowly die. Then like dominoes my mother dies, my grandmother, my brother, my best friend all die, my international business is stolen out from under me and my lovely wife hits the road. I mean it is one thing to hit a bump in the road but quite another to go bumpity, bumpity, bumpity bump. To put it mildly, I was devastated and spent the next few years on a mission of self medication back in LA -- a place I had no desire to live in anymore. In short, I came to believe that life sucked and mine was beyond repair. I believe today the mental heath professionals would label me as one who was suffering from multiple post traumatic stress disorder. I felt a soup of dark emotions swirling about like a swarm of nasty bees for years. I had gotten it into my head that I just might see the light of day again and came to believe the constant, habitual ingesting of intoxicants was severely working against me. Then I was introduced to AA by a well meaning friend. In those days there wasn't anyplace else offering to help out. Of course now days the business of addiction treatment has sprung forth and grown like ivy on brick. It will take a sandblaster of free thinking individuals to loosen the vines. I am sure the addictions treatment industry delights in the mill of employers and courts sentencing people to pay big bucks for their treatments. Treatments in which they partake in a frenzy of financial freebies for follow-up care by saying wham bam thank you ma'am now go to AA, or some other twelve steppin' offshoot.

AA thrives under the sanction of a misguided legal system that has become indifferent regarding personal responsibility for actions taken. Since I had gotten it into my head due to the trauma of severe losses in my life that I was damaged goods for good, the AA philosophy of labeling oneself as a diseased crippled-inside person agreed with my feelings and beliefs about myself at that time. As a human being I have a tendency to go out of my way to prove my thinking right. That is natural but when you are trying to prove wrong thinking right, problems are sure to follow. It is one thing to understand you have naturally occurring fallibilities and mistakes will be made in life that require you get up, dust yourself off and move on, and quite another to lie there in your mess refusing to budge until some deity gives you the juice. I admit I was temporarily impaired. I have made better judgments. I think if any reasonably healthy person experienced the multiple losses, the unrelenting starting over of the grieving process as each person passed away, and was stuck on nursing a bottle of alcohol for self medication, they too might be inclined to let a feeling of overwhelming devastation color the days. But that does not constitute a disease. Habitual, chronic consumption of intoxicants for any reason is a behavior not a disease. Yet in my previous condition it all sounded so real. It all seemed to make so much sense. Particularly since I wasn't making any sense out of the tragic events that had transpired in my life.

So I succumbed to the old AA indoctrination process. Meetings, meetings, meetings till you drop. Sponsorship -- trusting that just because some bozo says he has been sober for X amount of yearsm he must be qualified to guide me out of my intoxicated haze. Read, read, read the Bi, Bi, Big Book. Up the steps, down the steps, up the steps, down the steps. Write inventories. Be of service you selfish, self-centered, diseased twit. Write about it again. Forgive everyone for everything and be free, free, free. Write some more and always tell your sponsor everything. Hey he was a ex-con that had a voice like rubbing sandpaper and the demeanor of a drill sergeant so he obviously carried the sensitivities to properly dish out sound advice. Profound things like, "Go to meetings, meetings , meetings, read, read, read the Bi, Bi, Big Book, work, work, work the steps, write, write write inventories, be of service you self-centered diseased twit, forgive everyone for everything and be free, free, free. Call me everyday and don't drink between meetings. If you do drink don't call me until you're sober, you self-centered diseased person. Now go be of service to someone and get out of yourself". (Is anyone getting tired here? Believe me, I did get real tired and drained and stuck in the AA gum.) I later found a more suitable passive aggressive type sponsor. He would ask nice things like, "How is your face." to be followed by, "Because it sure is hurting me". Implying that I was still a newborn that had a lot of meetings to go to, inventories to write... ...well you get the picture. That's how it went for a few years until I had managed to become another edition of a walking Big Book.

An adopted persona full of the righteous witticisms of AA lore and my very own personal story of debasement by the most powerful demons of intoxicants. I had all the answers, only none of them were truly mine. I believed I could not trust my own thinking, that if I didn't stay close to the center of the herd the wolves of John Barleycorn would snatch me back into alcoholic oblivion. Hell on earth would be my fate as the penalty for straying. So I stuck, and stuck and the gum of AA grew from the bottom of my shoes to up my legs. Then around three years into the collective briar patch I lost my big old high paying job as a corporate executive, went through a divorce and joined the ranks of the unemployed ex-senior management types. But hey I still had AA and hallelujah, I was sober. Now I could go to the noon meetings so there was something to be (putui) grateful for. This went on for a couple of years. Then one day I got a phone call from an old friend asking me what I was up to and if I would consider helping them out in a new business overseas. With years of experience working outside the US mostly in start-up businesses, all the pieces fit. So hasty plans were made, I was sent off by the hive with a loud cheer and held up as a miracle of the program. Meanwhile in my mind the sneaky suspicion that I had actually been on a downward spiral by engaging in beliefs and behavior that were robbing me of personal integrity, dis-empowering me and molding me into some two dimensional cardboard cut out of my former self, was growing. Little did I know that that little phone call was eventually going to put me back on the plate and when I stood there at that crossroad I was going to hit a home run. It took awhile. I sought out AA in my new country but it was hard to get to, and the most I could usually manage was a meeting a week. Besides it wasn't my AA, the people seemed weird and I just wasn't getting the juice anymore. I got the AA withdrawals. I tried but I was jonesing nevertheless. Actually unknown to me I was getting healthier. I decided I needed to go back to the US and go to my old home group. So I did just that. I met some old groupers at a coffee shop before the big event. Among them was a guy who was always criticizing the program yet could not stay sober for any appreciable length of time. I berated him with steppism, Big Book lore and admonished him for his lack of honesty in not working a good and proper program. Then we headed over to the ol' meeting hall. I walked in and felt the old rush. The chorus of cheers met my ears and I knew I was going to be picked to share. Then as I sat there looking around at some familiar faces I took notice of the collection of the disoriented new catch of the month arranged around the room. I saw myself so many years ago. Weak and vulnerable, crying inside, begging for relief from my confusion and pain.

Then I looked at the faces of the old timers with their smug know it all grins and I saw a pack of predators ready to pounce and shove the steps, meetings, the Big Book and all the rest of rigid dogma and ritual down the gullet of the new birds. I remembered the recent altercation in the coffee shop where I too had armed my self with AA dogma and ritual and beaten a guy over the head with it. I looked again at those sanctimonious old timers with their look of authority in dispensing their belief in their God-given solution to substance abuse and as my mind fast forwarded from the state of the newcomers I saw a new sight that ripped my guts out. I saw me. I was one of those authoritative old timers dispensing my AA wisdom like some overly well behaved child. I had qualified myself based solely on the fact that I wasn't drinking to assign an imaginary cause (AA) to an observable event (being sober) and preach some gobbly gook of disease, powerlessness, rituals and dogma to every unsuspecting person down in the dumps over an addiction problem. Talk about a moment of clarity. Man I was on fire inside. The moment on the plate came and I hit that home run. I got up before I was tagged to share my pearls of wisdom, wiped the gum off my shoes and walked out. One of my old AA buddies having noticed the lack of star gazed luster in my eyes followed me out with that feigned look of concern asked the same old question, "Are you all right", translated to mean, is your program all right. I looked at him actually holding back a few tears of joy and said "I just can't do it anymore, it's a cult and I don't want anything to do with it. For whatever it is worth I think your an OK guy and maybe someday you'll see what I just saw in there but it is time to move on. Good-bye".

Back in my new overseas home I began to see life in a progressively clearer light. I had taken my girlfriend to a meeting at one time and introduced her to my AA friends. A couple of years had passed and we had gotten married. Then one day I asked my new wife (who speaks English as a second language but has never been a substance abuser) if she thought AA was a cult. I had really begun to see clearly that my behavior and my beliefs in AA had kept my personal integrity in a fog for years. Without hesitation in her heavy accent she said, "Of course". How simple it all became and how obvious it also became that I had returned to health and was out of the group loop. Now that is what I call a step. I got and continue to seek clarity.

Recently I got an e-mail that my favorite uncle died. There was that old deja-vu feeling. Overseas, getting a message about another one gone. Yet this time I didn't even think of calling anyone except my cousin to offer my condolences, I didn't even think about going to a meeting and sharing my feelings. I took some private time and went down by the local river and thought about him and how he was a player in my life. I paid my respects and said good-bye. I felt good, at peace with it and glad to be alive and taking a stand in life quite different than that old AA way.

Nowadays I endeavor to reach for those things that wise old sensei passed my way so many years ago. Things like personal integrity, self-responsibility, self-confidence, discipline, respect for oneself and others, compassion for suffering, to relax, to play, to give myself as well as the other guy a break and many more such empowering things. To take a stand in the drift of life and say you know sometimes things just are not fair and sometimes I will screw things up but that does not make me diseased, that makes me human. So don't take me wrong here. Not everyone in AA is going to have the same experience. Not everyone in AA is a lost cause. People do have a freedom to practice whatever religion they choose. Just try not to get confused like I did and think that the steps and the Big Book and the whole lot really has anything to do with freedom from alcohol or freedom period. I actually did meet some really nice people along the way. But if you're in there and you hear a knock on the door, you might want to take a look at those mushrooms that have been growing in the basement of your mind, walk up those steps open the door and step out into the fresh air of your own integrity and devise your own program for living. Stop selling yourself out. Join the human race. Were out here living our lives again.